Abstract
Research on students’ conceptions of learning is a growing and complex area of interest in the field of psychology of education. Even though much of the investigation addressed to explore conceptions of learning at the university level, still less research has considered how naïve (i.e. ‘learning as reduction of deficit knowledge through individual effort’) and sophisticated (i.e. ‘learning as opportunity and self-efficacy’) conceptions of learning are related to personal and contextual factors. This research investigated how gender, academic area, and level of study influence university students’ conceptions of learning. Three hundred forty-six university students participated in the study. They were either from humanities (240) or technical-scientific (106) areas of study and they were attending either a Bachelor (140) or Master’s degree (206) course. Conceptions of learning were explored using a self-report instrument (Learning Conceptions Questionnaire; LCQ). A MANOVA revealed that females show conceptions of learning more related to social and motivational aspects of learning with a greater personal involvement, compared with males. No typical pattern of conceptions of learning was found for humanities students or for technical-scientific students. Increasing with the level of study, students showed both naïve and sophisticated conceptions of learning increased, since both ‘learning as reduction of deficit knowledge through individual effort’ and ‘learning as opportunities and self-efficacy’ were more likely. Implications of these results and future lines of research will be discussed.
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Claudio Vezzani. Department of Education and Psychology, University of Florence, via di San Salvi 12, Complesso di San Salvi Padiglione 26, 50135 Florence, Italy. E-mail: claudio.vezzani@gmail.com, Phone: +39 055 2755010, +39 055 2756134 - 6236047
Current themes of research:
Learning conceptions. Reading. Writing. Research methodology. Psychometry.
Most relevant publications in the field of Psychology of Education:
• Pinto, G., Bigozzi, L., Vezzani, C., & Tarchi, C. (2016). Emergent literacy and reading acquisition: a longitudinal study from kindergarten to primary school. European Journal of Psychology of Education, 31, 1–17.
• Pinto, G., Bigozzi, L., Accorti Gamannossi, B., & Vezzani, C. (2012). Emergent literacy and early writing skills. The Journal of Genetic Psychology, 173, 330–354.
• Pinto, G., Bigozzi, L., Accorti Gamannossi, B., & Vezzani, C. (2009). Emergent literacy and learning to write: a predictive model for Italian language. European Journal of Psychology of Education, 24, 61–78.
• Bigozzi, L., Vezzani, C., Tarchi, C., & Fiorentini, C. (2011). The role of individual writing in fostering scientific conceptualization. European Journal of Psychology of Education, 26, 45–59.
• Lecce, S., de Bernart, D., Vezzani, C., Pinto, G., & Primi, C. (2011). Measuring sibling relationship’s quality during middle childhood: psychometric properties of Sibling Relationship Inventory. European Journal of Developmental Psychology, 4, 423–436.
Giulia Vettori. Department of Education and Psychology, University of Florence, via di San Salvi 12, Complesso di San Salvi Padiglione 26, 50135 Florence, Italy. E-mail: giulia.vettori@unifi.it
Current themes of research:
Students’ conceptions of learning and their relationships with learning outcomes. Language development, with a special interest for the writing process. Acquisition of writing and textual production and more generally, the relationship between spoken language and written language. Development of theory of mind.
Most relevant publications in the field of Psychology of Education:
• Bigozzi, L., Di Cosimo, A, and Vettori, G. (2016). Appearances are deceiving: observing the world as it looks and how it really is—theory of mind performances investigated in 3-, 4-, and 5-year-old children. Child Development Research, Article ID 5270924, 10 pages. https://doi.org/10.1155/2016/5270924.
• Bigozzi, L., Vettori, G. (2016). To tell a story, to write it: developmental patterns of narrative skills from pre-school to first grade. European Journal of Psychology of Education, 31, 461–477. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10212-015-0273-6.
Giuliana Pinto. Department of Education and Psychology, University of Florence, via di San Salvi 12, Complesso di San Salvi Padiglione 26, 50135 Florence, Italy. E-mail: giuliana.pinto@unifi.it, Phone: +39 055 2755010, +39 055 2756134 - 6236047
Current themes of research:
Emergent literacy. Reading. Writing. Learning and thinking (creativity, metaknowledge, mental language, learning conceptions) in the educational contexts.
Most relevant publications in the field of Psychology of Education:
• Bigozzi, L., Tarchi, C., Pezzica, S., Pinto, G. (2016). Evaluating the predictive impact of an emergent literacy model on dyslexia in Italian children: a four-year prospective cohort study. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 49, 51–64.
• Pezzica, S., Pinto, G., Bigozzi, L., & Vezzani, C. (2016). Where is my attention? Children’s metaknowledge expressed through drawings. Educational Psychology, 616–637, ISSN: 0144-3410.
• Pinto, G., Tarchi, C., Bigozzi, L. (2016). Development in narrative competences from oral to written stories in five- to seven-year-old children. Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 36, 1–10, ISSN: 0885-2006.
• Pinto, G., Bigozzi, L., Tarchi, C., Accorti Gamannossi, B., Canneti, L. (2015). Cross-lag analysis of longitudinal associations between primary school students’ writing and reading skills. Reading & Writing, 28, 1235–1255, ISSN: 0922-4777.
• Pinto, G.; Cameron, A.C., Hunt, A., Leger, P. (2015). Emerging literacy during “Day in the Life” in the transition to school. Early Child Development and Care, pp. 0–0, ISSN: 0300-4430.
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Vezzani, C., Vettori, G. & Pinto, G. University students’ conceptions of learning across multiple domains. Eur J Psychol Educ 33, 665–684 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10212-017-0349-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10212-017-0349-6